I thought that Händel was a Catholic, since I think that he wrote Masses. (Another question is whether Mozart is acceptable, since he was a Mason). So, if it is certain that he was a Protestant, then: - either I should fall in love with a Catholic Easter song (Resurrexit is my choice) or cancel the choir and resume it at Pentecost.
I'm not saying that Handel was Protestant (I'm not talking about that actually).
The point is,
how is the music used in practice over the centuries? There is
a lot in TRADITION, you see.
Johann Sebastian Bach was a Lutheran, technically. HOWEVER, some scholars
argue that he was a Catholic at heart, and wrote very Catholic music, but he
had a large family and many mouths to feed and a major truckload of talent,
so the market was supportive of his music for Lutheran use, which is why
he did what he did, which probably had an effect on his compositions, but
no one can argue that his St. Matthew's Passion, for example, is not Catholic.
Some of Handel's music is used in Catholic settings and some isn't. The same
goes for Mozart. For a long time Mozart's works were unacceptable in the
Church for the reason you mention, but over the many years, it was gradually
introduced and some motets are now quite dear to Catholics, especially
his famous Ave Verum Corpus, for example. Mozart among musicians is
thought to be the sole occupant of a very special category, and is thought
to be somewhat untouchable, due to his enormous talent and high development
thereof. Mozart said of the Gregorian Chant
Dies Irae, that he admired it so,
that he would have exchanged all of his life's work for the credit of having
been the composer of that one piece. That's something to think about! And
the NovusOrdoNonsense has abandoned the
Dies Irae - why? Well, it's too
much 'doom and gloom.' But apparently said 'doom and gloom' was of no
concern to the greatest musician in the history of music. It is a mark of
his greatness to have such discernment!
Mozart's final composition, his Requiem Mass, is so entirely Catholic that no
one dares to argue otherwise. It has a Dies Irae that seems to rival the
Chant version, in the opinion of many.
One of Handel's very nice hymns is "Hear Thy Children Gentlest Mother." And
as you might suspect, since it is Marian, the Prots shun it like the plague,
even though Martin Luther had a preference for Marian hymns.
This is not a simple topic. It takes a lot of experience to have discernment,
and there are a lot of differences in opinions. Also, over time, what is
acceptable and what is not changes. There was a time in the Church when
polyphony was forbidden. In the day of Giovanni Pierluigi de Palestrina, when
he first started composing, his music was blacklisted. It was only near the
end of his life that finally the Pope started allowing it to be sung at Mass. Only
men singers were allowed, and traditionally only a single melody line was
allowed: NO HARMONY whatsoever. It seems this may have been one of the
issues that affected the division with the Orthodox, whose liturgical chant uses a
lot of harmony, most tellingly a major fifth in the bass as a kind of drone. This
is never done in Gregorian Chant.